gps2gtfs
gps2gtfs spent a release making its docs stop describing functions it does not have.
A side-by-side editorial comparison of pedmut and vellumwidget — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
pedmut turns awkward mutation models into ones the likelihood engine can actually handle.
pedmut builds and transforms the mutation models used in pedigree likelihood calculations. Its recent arc is a toolkit of model transformations: makeReversible() with three methods, makeStationary() replacing the older stabilize(), adjustRate() for tuning overall mutation rate, and lumpMutSpecial() for lumping models that strong lumpability cannot handle. The most recent release is narrow, adding a programmatic output format to getParams().
vellumwidget is dissolving its own API: interaction now lives in the plot spec, not the widget call.
vellumwidget compiles a vellum scene or a vellumplot plot into a self-contained client-side htmlwidget with hover, select, brush, lasso, pan/zoom and export, and no server round-trip. The two-way Shiny story is complete: interactions surface as reactive inputs keyed by output id, and vellumwidget_proxy() drives an already-rendered widget from the server without re-rendering it. The last two releases are fidelity work rather than new surface, calibrating hit-testing from the rendered positions of marks and rendering the raster base image at 2x for HiDPI screens.
pedmut builds and transforms the mutation models used in pedigree likelihood calculations. Its recent arc is a toolkit of model transformations: makeReversible() with three methods, makeStationary() replacing the older stabilize(), adjustRate() for tuning overall mutation rate, and lumpMutSpecial() for lumping models that strong lumpability cannot handle. The most recent release is narrow, adding a programmatic output format to getParams().
The consistent goal is making models satisfy the mathematical properties downstream algorithms require. Reversibility, stationarity, and lumpability each unlock something in pedprobr, and the package keeps adding ways to coerce an arbitrary model into having them. lumpMutSpecial() is explicitly incomplete, described as covering only some cases with more possibly to follow, which sets up the main open thread.
Expect additional special lumping cases to be implemented, since the package documents the current coverage as partial and pedprobr's likelihood performance depends directly on it.
vellumwidget compiles a vellum scene or a vellumplot plot into a self-contained client-side htmlwidget with hover, select, brush, lasso, pan/zoom and export, and no server round-trip. The two-way Shiny story is complete: interactions surface as reactive inputs keyed by output id, and vellumwidget_proxy() drives an already-rendered widget from the server without re-rendering it. The last two releases are fidelity work rather than new surface, calibrating hit-testing from the rendered positions of marks and rendering the raster base image at 2x for HiDPI screens.
The direction is declarative. 0.7.0 removed the interaction-intent arguments from as_widget() outright, dropping the signature from roughly 36 arguments to 24 and moving highlight, filter and cross-filter into vellumplot's spec via select_point(), condition() and filter_by(). Each release since has enacted more of that compiled spec on the frozen scene, from conditional encodings to single-view filters to cross-view cross-filtering, leaving the widget as an interpreter of the plot rather than a configuration surface of its own. The bug fixes track the same theme the engine's do: measured geometry and rendered geometry must not drift.
The notes name the remaining hold-outs explicitly, saying hover_mode, crosshair, legend_click, select_mode and the tooltip-appearance arguments remain only until their spec equivalents land, so the next releases most likely move those into vellumplot and shrink as_widget() further. The scale binds flagged as following the filter work are the other stated next step.
Other Analytics products tracked by Sparkpulse, ranked by recent ship velocity. Each card links to a full editorial trajectory and lets you pivot into a head-to-head comparison with either pedmut or vellumwidget.
gps2gtfs spent a release making its docs stop describing functions it does not have.
ducksemantics puts an ontology graph and ColBERT retrieval inside DuckDB, callable from R.
dvir keeps making disaster victim identification a single call instead of a workflow.
pedbuildr reconstructs pedigrees from DNA, and it just got much faster at the search.
forrel is getting faster at the simulations forensic kinship work actually spends its time on.
pedFamilias exists to read one legacy file format, and it has that job nearly finished.
See all pedmut alternatives → · See all vellumwidget alternatives →
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
They serve adjacent needs but don't currently overlap on shipped themes. vellumwidget is currently shipping more aggressively (velocity 6.3 vs 0.0), with 1 editorial sparks in the last 30 days against 0. See the at-a-glance table above for a side-by-side breakdown of velocity, recent sparks, and editorial themes.
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. vellumwidget is currently shipping more aggressively (velocity 6.3 vs 0.0), with 1 editorial sparks in the last 30 days against 0. For your specific use case, the alternatives sections above list other Analytics products to evaluate alongside.
Top pedmut alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "pedmut alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/pedmut for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
Top vellumwidget alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "vellumwidget alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/vellumwidget for the full list with editorial commentary on each.